Japans JOIN willing to partner in Indias infra building

From Joyeeta Dey Tokyo, May 31 (PTI) Upbeat about Indias economic growth potential, Japan Government sponsored fund JOIN today said it is keen to explore investment opportunities in the countrys infrastructure space.

Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation (JOIN) CEO Takuma Hatano after meeting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) would play a very important role for Indias infrastructure development.

"We should consider how we could work together with the NIIF, namely what we needed firstly is to find the good candidate project. Then we could work together based on a particular project," Hatano said when asked if JOIN is exploring investment opportunities in NIIF.

He said Japanese institutions are looking at government-backed institutions like the NIIF to park their fund. The government holds 49 per cent in NIIF and is looking for investors for the remaining stake in the Rs 40,000 crore fund.

JOIN, Hatano said, has recently met IDFC and other Indian companies. "Of course Indias macro-economic performance is very excellent, but when it comes to private investment from Japan to infrastructure, this is one of the very challenging investments," he said. Stating that infrastructure investment takes a long time to give returns, He said, this is the right time to make Japanese investment in India. JOIN is the government-private sponsored fund in Japan that specialises in overseas infrastructure investment, according to its website. The company supports in building infrastructure through PPP arrangements. It works in collaboration with Japanese companies, banks, institutions (JICA, JBIC, NEXI, etc.) and the government.

Earlier in the day, Jaitley also met Government Pension Investment Fund President Norihiro Takahashi and assured of good returns on investments in India. PTI JD ANZ MKJ

This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.

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